A DIY Kitchen Chalkboard Wall

Kitchen wall before the chalkboard

While I search the internet for galley kitchen ideas during our remodel, I find that most end with a wall that has either a window or a door that leads most likely to the outside.  Unfortunately, our wall has neither.  In fact, we were lucky enough to have a wall that displays a beautiful, electrical breaker box.  Sometimes, I wonder who designed this place!

To me the wall screams for some sort of art.  I placed our magnet collection there just to give me a visual.  I considered a framed piece of art to hang over the box.  This way, we could have something pretty, but still be able to access the box.  The freezer door, however, swings right into the area.  Since we use our kitchen a lot, I really didn't want to sacrifice function for aesthetics.

Studying the space, I decided that maybe a chalkboard could be "art" and fun at the same time.  I've walked passed the chalkboard paint at Lowe's a few hundred times and have seen some really cool, local chalkboard art drawings and sayings that I thought would be great for a kitchen.  Since Al has been doing all of the remodeling work, I decided to take on this project myself.

I picked up a quart of Valspar Chalkboard paint at Lowe's for about $15.  The wall is about 8'x8'.  Lucky for me, the cabinets have not been installed on this end of the kitchen yet.  I didn't have to worry about cutting in around cabinets or taping off (I had read that removing tape could possibly pull the chalkboard paint from the wall).  I cut in the wall with a brush and rolled on the chalkboard paint with a regular, low nap paint roller.  I did not prime the white wall with dark primer.  I was just prepared to apply several coats of paint.

I let the first coat dry about 5 hours and applied the second coat.  This paint is very thick and fortunately for me, two coats did the job.  The wall was black and without the white cabinetry installed, things were looking a little dark.  I let the wall dry for three days.

I guess the most important step in this DIY project is to "season" the chalkboard.  This step is basically taking a piece of chalk and rubbing it all over the chalkboard so that when you erase you are not permanently stuck with whatever you wrote.  I must say, this process creates a TON of dust.  If you do this project inside, be prepared to clean everything in the room.  I did cheat a little by starting on a section behind where the cabinets will go.  This allowed me determine for my wall that I needed to "season" twice, wiping down with a damp cloth in between.

After that, the wall was ready to go.  I spent the next 5 hours filling the wall with sayings.  I am better at printing that drawing, so I decided to start with something I was comfortable with.

Here's how it turned out.

DIY Chalkboard wall 

For some reason, the flash accentuates the breaker box, but when you are standing in the kitchen, it is hardly visible.  I did leave some "free space" at the bottom for two reasons.  First, my 11 year old daughter, Hannah would have been upset with me if I had created a chalkboard that she couldn't write on and I thought anything below the countertops could possibly get brushed against and erased.

Now we have an entire wall of "art" and something visually appealing to a rather dead end in the kitchen.  Overall, this DIY project was much easier than I expected.  That's a first!

Maybe I'll redo the art for the holidays. Now if I can just get the rest of the cabinets! :-)

Venting A Condo Stove Hood To The Outside

One thing about living in the middle of a renovation is that you get to see exactly how things work in your space before you make any major decisions.

Our condo is small, but it has "open concept".  While the open concept approach makes a space feel larger, it can have a few drawbacks.  Anything that you cook in the kitchen is going to drift into the other living spaces.  Good ventilation is important in an open concept.  I quickly found this out while boiling a pot of water for pasta and had to open the balcony door to let the steam escape.

Here is what the kitchen looked like when we purchased the foreclosure.

As you can see, the microwave was an after-thought to the space.  Unfortunately, like many apartment/condo units, our kitchen was not vented to the outside.  The microwave acted as a hood to recirculate air from the cooktop.  Most over the range microwaves now come with filters to trap grease and dirty air, but we enjoy cooking and the space is so small that I really wanted to vent to the outside.

There are a few things to consider before trying to run vent ducts in an established condo or apartment building.  You will need to determine where the vent duct will run inside the unit and where will it exit to the outside.

Lucky for us, Al had done some poking around in the ceiling when we were taking out the fireplace insert and found there was good space separating our unit from the upstairs unit.  He was confident that we could run the vent duct from the hood into the ceiling and across the unit to the outside.  Another plus for us is that our unit has an enclosed balcony or porch.  The duct could exit the building from the ceiling of the porch.  This way, it would be barely visible and not interfere with the exterior of the building. I had read that some apartments in NYC run their vents out a window like an air conditioning unit.  I thought that was also a clever idea.

Al gained access to the ceiling by cutting a hole in the sheet rock inside the area where he removed the fireplace insert.

Our plan is to create a media wall with storage in this vast hole, but for now it comes in handy to gain access to the ceiling space.

There was a straight shot from the kitchen to the balcony for the duct with only a few HVAC ducts currently in the space.

A 4 inch expandable, aluminium vent duct was used to vent to the outside.

One hole was cut in the kitchen ceiling and the duct was "fished" to the opening at the fireplace.

Another hole was cut in the balcony ceiling and "fished" to the middle where the two ducts were connected.
The outside duct was capped with a self opening/closing vent cover when the fan is in use.

For the kitchen side of the vent, we had a few options.  We could either stay with the microwave over the range or install a vent hood.  Since space is limited, we decided to stick with the microwave over the range.  The set up for the range is electric.  Electric cooktops need about 400 CFMs for good ventilation.  There are a few microwaves out there that offer 400 CFM fans.  For many reasons, however, we went with the Fridgidaire Gallery series for appliances.  The microwave with this package has a 350 CFM fan.  I just make sure that I turn it on a few minutes before I need it to get the air flowing in the right direction.


Al installed a few cabinets (more about cabinets in a separate post) and hung the microwave.  Since he used a round vent duct, he had to have an adapter to fit the microwave to the duct.

The apparatus takes up most of the cabinet, but is hidden from view by the cabinet doors.

I should let you know that we did take our new cabinetry to the ceiling.  This allowed us raise the microwave and made the kitchen ceiling feel much higher.  The microwave hood is positioned 25 inches from the cooktop.  This measurement is important because if you get the hood to high, it will loose effectiveness.

Now our condo kitchen hood is vented outside!! It works great and there is hardly any steam while I'm cooking.  I can't imagine it any other way!! :-)